


Experimental Phase

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Series: Dataverse [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Closeted Character, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 16:19:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1353814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bates asks about Atlantis and Kavanagh tells him about Ford, about Everett and Grodin, about Sheppard’s suicide run, about the ZPM.  Bates doesn’t ask about his own injuries or his prognosis and Kavanagh is grateful.  He doesn’t want to be the one to tell Bates that his military career is over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Experimental Phase

Kavanagh beams down to the SGC from the Daedalus and delays the inevitable for as long as possible. He moves the three boxes he stored in his mom’s garage into the personnel quarters next to Vala Mal Doran. He claims a whiteboard and clears himself a workspace in Dr. Lee’s lab. He watches four hours of Adult Swim and eats two Big Macs and YouTubes the Filipino prisoners’ version of “Thriller” and then he heads down to the infirmary.

Bates is still in a coma.

“He is healing,” Dr. Lam says, “but the process is slow. We expect him to make a near full recovery. It’s just going to take some time.”

“That’s good to hear,” Kavanagh says and makes himself leave. He comes back when the mountain has emptied for the night, when the infirmary is quiet and dark, and watches Bates sleep.

Bates sleeps for a long time.

“You know,” Dr. Lam says ten days later, plunking her tray down next to Kavanagh’s, “you don’t have to sneak around in the middle of the night to visit a sick friend.” She eats a bite of meatloaf and wrinkles up her nose. “We’re waking up Sergeant Bates this afternoon. Might be nice for him to see a familiar face.”

Kavanagh’s not so sure about that, but everybody else Bates might want at his bedside is in Pegasus or dead or doesn’t have the clearance and maybe Bates would rather wake up to Kavanagh than nobody at all. Maybe.

Bates comes to all at once, none of the slow and tortured struggle Kavanagh expects. He’s also fairly alert, considering. “Hey, Dr. Kavanagh,” he says. “You made it out.” And then he smiles, sweet and beautiful and alive, and something wound tightly in Kavanagh’s chest eases just a little.

Bates asks about Atlantis and Kavanagh tells him about Ford, about Everett and Grodin, about Sheppard’s suicide run, about the ZPM. Bates doesn’t ask about his own injuries or his prognosis and Kavanagh is grateful. He doesn’t want to be the one to tell Bates that his military career is over.

The next morning, the SGC moves Bates out of Cheyenne. He doesn’t need the Ancient tech that kept him safely in a prolonged coma anymore and apparently his mother has been intent on seeing her son with all the fury and persistence Kavanagh expects from a woman who raised a Marine. Somehow she even gets Landry’s number and the General makes sure Harriman’s afternoon is just as miserable as that phone call even though Kavanagh’s certain Harriman had nothing to do with the leak. Kavanagh’s money is on Woolsey; he probably caved the second Mrs. Bates raised her voice.

Kavanagh quickly falls into a routine. He spends his days arguing mostly good-naturedly (he hopes) with Dr. Lee and trying to prevent Felger from building a death ray. And every chance he gets he goes to the hospital. At first Kavanagh waits forty eight hours between visits; he doesn’t want to appear too eager. But Bates never seems anything but happy to see him and Kavanagh likes his family. His little brother has a habit of telling embarrassing childhood stories that Kavanagh suspects Bates enjoys despite his protests.

One evening, SG-1 comes back from PX2-482 with a machine that looks suspiciously like a ZPM but turns out to be a bomb. Vala accidentally activates the countdown when she hands it off to Dr. Lee, naturally, and Kavanagh spends the next two hours trying to shut the damn thing down. Mitchell wants to chuck it through the Gate to an uninhabited planet, but Dr. Lee thinks contact with the event horizon will cause the bomb to immediately detonate. Landry evacuates the base and a three mile radius around the mountain and at the end, when they don’t explode, Kavanagh high fives Dr. Lee before puking up his last two meals and most of his stomach lining.

At the hospital, Mrs. Bates is pacing around the waiting room. For the first time since Kavanagh met her, she seems lost, unsure of herself, and Kavanagh is suddenly afraid that something terrible has happened while he’s been cutting the metaphorical blue wire. “What’s wrong?” he says.

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Bates says, throwing her hands in the air. “But I can tell you this. If he wasn’t laid up in that bed, I would take that child over my knee and beat some sense into him. Just like his father, that one is.” She shakes her head. “Maybe you better come back later.”

“No. It’s alright,” Kavanagh says and then he pushes open the heavy door to Bates’s room. The television is turned to CNN and Kavanagh can read on the crawl that the National Guard is taking down the barricade around Cheyenne. Suddenly Kavanagh knows exactly what’s wrong with Bates.

Bates doesn’t look up. Kavanagh leans against the wall and waits. The silence stretches out for a long while before Bates speaks. “They told me I was out of the Corp and I thought I understood what that means.” He smiles bitterly. “Then WDAM interrupted the game with that story about a chemical spill and I knew something big was going down. And that’s when I got it. When I really got it. I kept thinking, ‘I should be there. I should be there.’ But I won’t be. Ever again.”

Kavanagh doesn’t know what to say. When Bates finally meets his eyes, the look on his face physically hurts Kavanagh. He doesn’t think another human being has ever been so unashamedly devastated in his presence and he really wishes that he had a little more experience comforting others. Or any experience. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s a shitty deal, and I’m sorry. But you’re good for more than shooting Wraith and Genii. The SGC isn’t done with you yet. You’ve got options.”

For one horrific moment Kavanagh is certain he’s said exactly the wrong thing, but then Bates’s expression turns thoughtful and he unclenches his fists from the sheets and Kavanagh can breathe again. They don’t talk about his future after that, but a week later, Woolsey shows up at the hospital and when he leaves, Sergeant Bates is now Agent Bates.

The day after Bates is discharged from the hospital, Bates grills burgers in his backyard and he and Kavanagh drink cheap beer on the back porch until the mosquitoes drive them inside. “Why don’t you get a place?” Bates says, stretching his legs out on the couch and into Kavanagh’s space, his feet nearly in Kavanagh’s lap.

Kavanagh shrugs. “I barely have enough stuff to fill my quarters at the SGC. Besides, if I have an idea in the middle of the night I can just get up and go to the lab. Driving in every day would be a pain in the ass.”

“Man, you work too hard. Afraid McKay’s gonna get the Nobel before you?” Bates grins and Kavanagh thumps a bottle top at his chest that makes a very satisfying smack against a button before skittering across the living room floor.

“Hardly.” Kavanagh looks down at the beer in his hands, at the ankle that rests mere inches from his thigh, at the tiny scar on that knob of bone. He wants so badly to touch Bates there, to warm that imperfect bit of skin with his hands, but he knows that’s impossible. Kavanagh realizes he’s been quiet for too long and when he glances up, Bates is watching him with a strange and unreadable expression on his face. Unfortunately, Kavanagh’s fairly certain that what he wants is written all over his own. When Bates doesn’t say anything, when he doesn’t move away or make a joke to cut the tension, Kavanagh slowly reaches out and traces the delicate line of that scar, the pad of his forefinger moving lightly over the raised flesh. He presses a thumb into the bone and feels Bates’s blood beating faster through the veins under his hand. “I want,” Kavanagh says. “I want,” and then Bates closes the distance between them.

Sometimes at night when Kavanagh is jerking off, he imagines that Bates kissed him back on Atlantis, that he didn’t turn his head, that he didn’t push Kavanagh away with the same hands that are now pulling him close. He lies in the dark and fucks into his fist and imagines Bates’s mouth, his lips, his tongue, his sharp teeth sinking into a bottom lip. Kavanagh has thought of these things every night since the siege and never once in all that time has it occurred to him that one day in another galaxy he might actually find himself sprawled out on a faded green couch kissing Bates. The kiss is tender, sweet, and when Bates finally pulls away, Kavanagh is trembling.

Bates unzips Kavanagh’s pants and shoves them down around his knees before shucking his own. He takes both their cocks in his broad and callused hand and strokes them together until Kavanagh comes in a hot mess on his belly. Kavanagh pushes Bates away and he sees a brief moment of hurt and uncertainty in Bates’s eyes until Bates realizes what he’s after. Kavanagh likes the way Bates’s cock feels in his mouth, likes the way Bates moans his name and yanks almost painfully on his hair as he sucks. 

Kavanagh thinks after that things will be weird between them, but they aren’t. Bates wipes them both off with his T-shirt and they watch _Wrath of Khan_ on Spike and Bates packs him a Tupperware of patties to take back with him to the mountain. Kavanagh makes the drive with the windows rolled down and ACDC blaring and the biggest shit-eating grin he’s ever seen on his face. By the time he unlocks the door to his quarters, Kavanagh’s cheeks hurt. 

“What happened to you?” Vala says from her doorway. “You look almost happy. I daresay we will all die of shock.” She cocks her head to the side and twirls a lock of hair around her fingers. “You got laid, didn’t you?” Vala stomps her foot. “Everybody but me. If I’d known allying myself with you people would be a ticket to celibacy, I would have given it a little more thought.” 

Kavanagh is feeling rather magnanimous, so he offers Vala a burger and she eats it sitting cross-legged on her bed while reading aloud a _Cosmo_ dating quiz. Kavanagh is apparently into strong, silent women with the potential for violence. Two days later, when she is dead, Kavanagh can’t stop thinking about this incomprehensible Jaffa joke she told him that night, about the almost imperceptible hurt in her eyes when she spoke of Daniel, about how pleased she seemed with Kavanagh’s company.

Once Bates is done with physical therapy, he starts working out of the SGC. Kavanagh thinks they’ll see more of each other, but they don’t. Bates keeps his distance when they’re under the mountain; sometimes, if the world is ending again, they don’t touch for days, and Kavanagh tries not to let it bother him. But he can’t help the ache in his chest when Bates looks at him like he’s just another squint, like he doesn’t matter, like he didn’t spend the weekend with his legs wrapped around Bates’s waist. It hurts and maybe that’s ridiculous; he and Bates are good in all the ways that matter, in all the ways that Kavanagh has ever wanted from another person, in all ways except one. Sometimes, in the secret of the night when Bates is sleeping, his face mashed into Kavanagh’s shoulder blades, Kavanagh wonders what Bates would do if he stood too close in the briefing room, if he ran the flat of his palm across Bates’s shoulders in the mess, if he told Bates he loved him before the Daedalus beamed him halfway across the world.

One Tuesday, Kavanagh finds himself on PX7-391 with most of an Ancient lab wedged on top of his body. He can barely breathe. His peripheral vision is nonexistent and he would be worried if he wasn’t so tired. And cold. Carter keeps talking to him, but Kavanagh can’t understand what she’s saying. He must lose consciousness at some point because when he next opens his eyes he’s in the infirmary at the SGC and Bates is sitting at his bedside.

“Hey,” Bates says softly. “I thought I’d lost you.”

For one exhilarating moment, Kavanagh sees everything Bates feels written all over his face—fear, relief, affection. Bates reaches out to take Kavanagh’s hand and then Dr. Lam draws open the curtain around Kavanagh’s bed. Bates snatches back his hand and shutters his face and he doesn’t try to touch Kavanagh again for the entire week he spends in the infirmary.

Dr. Lam releases Kavanagh and Bates drives him out to his place for dinner. Kavanagh waits until all that’s left of the chicken is bones, until the plates are stacked neatly in the sink, and then he asks, “Are you ashamed of me?”

Bates startles, shocked, and Kavanagh can see he’s never spun out the ramifications of his behavior to their obvious conclusion. “No. No, of course not. No. Why would you think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The way that no one we work with has any idea we’re a couple. The way you won’t get anywhere near me when we’re at the SGC.”

“Surely you can understand the need for discretion.”

“You’re a civilian now, same as me,” Kavanagh says. “You can fuck whoever you want and everybody else be damned.” 

Bates shakes his head. “It’s not that simple, and you know it. My office is always coordinating with the SGC and most of my guys are ex-military. I can’t afford to lose their respect, their trust.”

Kavanagh really doesn’t know what to say to that so he doesn’t say anything. Later when Bates pins him to the mattress and moves inside him like he’s precious, when Bates lets his body say all the things he’s afraid for the world to know, Kavanagh thinks this is a tenderness he cannot bear.

The next morning he applies for a transfer back to Atlantis.

Just before Kavanagh ships out, Bates pulls him into a storage room outside Dr. Lee’s lab and blows him against a stack of crates. “I’m sorry,” Bates says, scrubbing the back of his hand across his mouth. “I’m so damn sorry.” The entire three weeks he’s in Atlantis, Kavanagh can’t stop thinking of that moment—Bates on his knees, his ragged breath, the hollowness of his eyes.


End file.
